


take me back in time to love you

by mariiposie



Series: RINA WEEK 2020 [1]
Category: High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (TV)
Genre: F/M, also : my redo of rina week day 2 bc my last one sucked, i got carried away w this yup, partly a ricky character study too yup yup, this is the stuff of rina break downs yup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:33:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24175159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariiposie/pseuds/mariiposie
Summary: Take me backIn time to love youHold me closer than beforeHeal my heart and mend what's brokenTo feel you once more-Gina and Ricky got each other. Friday nights spent under the bleachers of East High, just talking, connecting. Forgetting whatever was happening in their realities, choosing to focus on one where it was just the two of them.And then Gina leaves. Forced to move away to New York, because of her Mom’s work.Now two years later, and Ricky’s sat by himself at his senior prom, wondering why he even came. Wondering why Big Red insisted so vehemently that he would be here.When he sees her walk through that door, after all this time, his reality finally clicks.
Relationships: Ricky Bowen & Gina Porter, Ricky Bowen/Gina Porter
Series: RINA WEEK 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1741882
Comments: 4
Kudos: 41





	take me back in time to love you

**Author's Note:**

> ehh the canon is vaguely there, but for the purposes of this fic, gina left after a year, a nini’s isn’t here  
> *** inspired by take me back, from the starkid musical, black friday ***
> 
> it’s 5am <3 but i rlly enjoyed this <33 but all i can think of is the take me back guitar rift <333 enjoy my loves <3333

Yeah, he didn’t want to be here. Stuck in a stuffy room with people that probably hated him? Not ideal.

Pretty much sums up his East High experience though.

He wasn’t even planning on coming tonight. It’s not like he was even planning on dancing (the music being played was just shit remixes you’d hear at a frat party), or even talking to everyone other than Red.

Nonetheless, Red protested at his stubbornness, and after weeks upon weeks upon weeks of convincing, Ricky was actually here.

And now that he is here, he finds himself thinking about the memories he had of this place. 

Sat in the same hall where he’d first stepped out of his shell and onto the stage in the musical. The same halls and corridors he’d wondered aimlessly, looking for his classroom on the very first day. The same bleachers he’d spent sleepless nights under, especially in the midst of his Mom moving away.

Then there were the memories he’d rather erase from his mind. Halfway through opening night when his Mom had turned up with that Todd guy. The night that Gina had left.

No- he wasn’t here to dwell on the bad memories of his time here. Apparently, at least from what Red had told him in his third Point Evidence Explanation paragraph as to why Ricky should come to prom, this was supposed to be a “celebration of our time at East High”. So no, he wasn’t going to dwell on those memories.

He was going to- actually what was he going to do? Other than sit in uncomfortable silence, surrounded by mutual friends. People he definitely wasn’t going to even think about when he left.

But there was one person he was thinking about.

He’s brought away from his thoughts by Red’s voice in his ear. “Look dude, we can still have a good night tonight. I didn’t give you twenty bucks to buy that yellow tie for nothing, did I?”

He hums, resting his head on his hand.

He tries to not. But now he’s thinking about her. Thinking about Gina.

Thoughts of her scurry across his brain. How unfair it was that she wasn’t going to be here for their senior prom, how much she would’ve enjoyed this night. If anything, she should be here in his place, sat on a table with people that actually liked her for her, embracing the atmosphere of the night. She would’ve relished it. Relished the entire night. 

But she’s not here. She’s on the other side of the country. Moved after a year because of her Mom’s job.

He feels himself frowning, so he shakes his head, placing his consciousness back into the hall.

Looking around the people at the table, he feel the awkward glances they kept throwing in his direction. Kourt, Seb, Carlos. All would glance at him, before realising they were staring, and shifting their gaze to the main front entrance of the hall.

He turns to Red, confused. “Do I have something on my face?”

Too quickly for his liking, Red dismisses Ricky’s question. 

He narrows his eyes at Red, but Red’s already looking away, necked craned, trying to get a clearer view of the front entrance.

Okay, maybe in hindsight he should’ve known that something was up. Red’s insistence that he was here should’ve set warning signs off in his mind. Something was up. And he wasn’t planning on being here when it did.

So now, that nervous feeling, the feeling of adrenaline coursing through his bloodstream, that feeling that was yelling his ears telling him to get out of there, was rising within him.

He’s gonna run before something happens.

He stands up in his seat, telling Red he was going to the toilet, much to the protest of everyone around the table. Even Carlos reached across the table, talking loudly over the music, “No, you can’t leave!”

Red, Seb and Kourt widen their eyes at him, obviously telling him to zip it. He looks around at them, brushing a non-existent hair behind his ear, “Or you can, do what you want.”

Ricky gets up anyway. Fuck this. Not worth the anxiety it was giving him. He doesn’t even know what’s happening, or what’s going to happen. He tries wracking his brain thinking of any solution to what was going on, but he purposely leaps over the one scenario that keeps playing in his brain.

He doesn’t want to get his hopes up like that. Because when it’s not that, they’ll only come crashing down, taking him with them.

Working through moving bodies as they dance, he mutters an excuse me every time he barges into them, but escaping these walls that were fast closing in him was the only thing on his mind. 

And of course, it’s just his luck that he’s slap bang in the middle, in full vision of every other person in the room, directly in front of the main entrance as she walks in. Arms interlocking with both of the Caswells.

Gina Porter.

-

You look just the same  
As I always remember  
All those Friday nights  
Under the lights  
Under the bleachers together

-

Friday February 7th. Two years ago.

Slamming the door behind him, he locks himself in his room, tears threatening to fall. But they don’t.

He pulls himself together, holds himself together, choosing not to process the emotions that were currently swirling like a hurricane through his head.

So he finds himself staring up at the ceiling. Ignoring the storm inside his head.

He shuts his eyes and just breathes. 

His parents were definitely not currently having a cheeky domestic downstairs, that he was very deliberately choosing to ignore.

Then he hears a knock on the glass of his window. Ignoring it at first, chalking it down to a haphazard bug that couldn’t see where it was going.

Then another. A second haphazard bug?

And then a third knock. Confused as ever, he gets off his mattress and heads to the window. He holds his breath as he undoes the latch, unsure of what he was going to encounter on the other side. 

“Hey-“ Opening the latch, he’s suddenly greeted by a small pebble straight to his head.

A voice from below him calls up “Jesus, dude I’m so sorry.”

Holding a hand to where the pebble had hit him, he looks down to see who the culprit was.

Stood on his front lawn, illuminated only by the light of the moon stood Gina Porter, a guilty smile playing on her lips. “I’m sorry, I- In my defence, I didn’t know you were going to open it.”

He brushes it off. “Don’t worry about it.” He shouts down, ignoring the rest of the shouting that was currently happening in his household. “You throw rocks at people’s houses often?”

“Nope. Just yours.”

They’re just looking at each other, Gina looking up at Ricky who’s leaning out of his bedroom windowsill, and Ricky looking down at Gina stood in his garden lawn, playing with her fingers with a backpack at her feet.

It’s been two weeks since Homecoming. Two weeks since that moment in the car. Two weeks since they’d got each other.

It’s also 11pm. Stars dance and twinkle across the sky, as Gina finally finds the confidence to shatter the silence between them.

“Uh, weird question,” she chuckles to herself, realising just how strange this whole scenario seemed, “but I- do you want to come and sit under the bleachers with me?” She reaches down to the bag by her feet, opening it up and showing Ricky it’s contents. “I brought food. I usually go there by myself when I can’t sleep, and I just thought-“

Before Gina can even finish her sentence, Ricky finds himself scaling down the drain pipe, two winter coats in his hand, joining Gina on his lawn.

He places one of the coats over her shoulders, shrugging when she looks back questioningly. “You looked cold.”

It was weird. It was like, with her he didn’t even have to think about every decision he needed to make. Like he didn’t have to think through his every decision, like he usually had to. It just happened. When Ricky was with Gina he lived life in the present.

Under the bleachers, they find themselves talking, just talking. About anything and everything, whilst they demolish the cakes that Gina had made.

Lying on their backs. In each other’s presence.

Ricky finds himself turning over to face Gina, their faces mere inches apart. And then he talks. Spills. Everything about what was going on at home, with his parents, comes snowballing out of him like an avalanche racing down a hill. Things he’s never told anyone, not even Red.

When he realises how much he’s said, he half expects Gina to be legging it away from him, halfway across the football pitch. But she doesn’t.

She moves closer to him and does the same, telling him all about her troublesome home life, her almost complete lack of stability. About her Dad.

Under the pitch black of East High’s playing field, illuminated only by the light of the stars and the moon above them, they confide in one another.

In Gina he finds someone he can just talk to. And not in a way he can talk to anyone else. He knows he has a confidant in Gina.

In one last act of permanence, they etch their names into the steel frame above them, marking this as their place, as their spot.

He never asks exactly why Gina came to his that night, why she couldn’t sleep. Nor does he ever ask for that winter coat back. It’s hers now, safe in her care, to keep forever.

And after that Friday, there wasn’t a single Friday night that passed them by that they didn’t spend under those bleachers, just talking.

-

Take me back when things were light  
Light my heart and light my shadow  
And make it alright

-

He watches her. Stood motionless in the middle of the dance floor, he watches as that familiar smile played on her lips as she says hi to Carlos and Seb and Kourt, who had walked around to the front entrance to greet her.

He watches the way the colours of the disco lights dance across her face.

Looking across the crowd of dancing people directly between them, hers was the only face he could see.

And then she looks at him.

It’s like everyone in the room had been waiting on tenterhooks for this moment, like everyone apart from Ricky knew she was coming tonight. It felt like every single pair of eyes in that room were on them, and yet it also felt like they were finally alone in the universe, just the two of them. And for what feels like the first time in his life, Ricky isn’t afraid. He’s not scared of taking the leap into the unknown.

It’s as if the sea of people surrounding them splits straight in two, as Gina walks straight towards him, impish smile on her face. A field of gravity surrounds them and he’s being pulled towards her. They meet in the middle, not speaking a single word before falling into an over the top hug. One where he’s lifting her off the ground, sweeping her off her feet and spinning her around, as the extra fabric of her dress envelopes both of their legs.

Even after the hug has ended, their hands remain, lingering on each other’s arms.

“So, you come here often?” Ricky smirks at Gina’s remark, launching into another hug, burying his face deep within the curls that sat on her shoulder.

He’s taking in her scent. The vanilla mixed with apricot that sat on his chest every time he thought of her. The scent that had become so familiar to him from those Fridays spent under the bleachers.

She’s teasing him. “You matched ties?”

“Red actually picked it out.” As much as he doesn’t want to, he pulls his eyes away from Gina to look back at Red, sat at their table. He’s giving Ricky a wide-eyed thumbs up. He’d known this whole time that Gina was coming tonight. All that begging. Just so he could be here with her.

His eyes flit back to Gina, processing how she looked stood before him. “You haven’t changed at all.”

“In a good way?”

“In a good way. You look- you’re stunning.” She smiles straight at him, and through the music he can just about hear her let out a small laugh. 

She’s looking straight at his eyes, like she’s searching for something, looking for something deep within him.

He’s not going to cry. Sucking the tears back into his tear ducts, he speaks again, softer than he had before. “It’s been a quiet two years since- What are you doing here?”

-

You and I were meant to be  
Something more than a faded memory  
Till you and I, something divided us

-

Friday, August 31st. Two years ago.

They’re under the bleachers again. Looking up at the infinity above them.

He can tell something’s different. Gina’s antsy. She’s never antsy. The air that surrounds them is still, and he can feel her holding in a breath.

“We’re moving. They want Mom in New York, for work.”

It hits him like an asteroid. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know how to act. It was foolish to even think he deserved a constant in his life. Every-time he opens himself up to someone, they always inevitably waltz up and out of his life. 

“When?” He’s not going to let it slip. He’s not going to let her see. He knows it’s not her fault, and he knows how hard she takes these things. And he’s never going to blame her for leaving him. 

“Two days.” Fuck. He takes a deep breath in, in a futile attempt to relax that panicked sensation that was bubbling in the pit of his stomach. But it shudders, and in the stillness of the night he knows that Gina hears it.

“I’m so sorry Ricky. I told her-“ 

“It’s okay.” It wasn’t. He wasn’t. He wanted her to stay, needed her to stay.

Instinctively he sits up, running his fingers over the steel of the bleachers, feeling for their mark, their sign of permanence, the knowledge that this was them.

He feels her move beside him, looking up at the carving. She lightly places her hand on his shoulder, trying to comfort him.

Now he just feels selfish. Like he’s making it all about him. This was Gina’s reality. Having to move halfway across the country, forced to make new friends, a new life.

He ignores the tear that had made its way down his cheek and turns to her. “We’ve still got two days.”

-

If the universe is infinite  
Then it’s definite  
There’s an alternate reality  
Where it’s only you and me. 

-

“What are you doing here?” 

“Wouldn’t be prom without me.” That much was true.

“How did you-“

She turns, searching the crowd for someone. There, joining Red at the table. “The magic of the Caswells. And Red, and Kourt, and Carlos and Seb and-“

A beat.

“I’ve missed you.”

Another beat.

“I missed you too.”

They look at each other in the silence. They don’t say anything. They don’t need to.

That silence is only broken as Red comes hurtling towards the both of them, almost knocking them to the ground in a bear hug. 

Red leads her towards their table, Ricky following close behind. 

And they talk. They just talk. About everything that had happened in the past two years, the new friends Gina had made in New York, the other musicals East High had performed in Gina’s absence.

Eventually, Gina gets up and leads the rest of the theatre group to the dance floor, and Ricky’s finally left alone at the table. 

But he still finds himself searching the crowd for the glow of her face. And every-time she spins, her eyes meet his.

She sees him. Only him. The real him. The Ricky she knows. The Ricky she came back here for.

-

Cause I already lost it once  
What I already won  
I've lost too much now  
To care  
But I know that something’s still there

-

Sunday, September 2nd, Two Years Ago.

Under the bleachers. For one last time. He’d brought the food this time, thought he’d take at least something of Gina’s shoulders.

“So I don’t actually know what the climate in New York is like, but I’m pretty sure it snows, and then I thought you’d get cold so I followed the same Youtube video, and-“ He pulls the wonky looking wooly hat from the bottom of his bag, dusting off the crumbs that had settled on it.

“Ricky- You didn’t have to.” He did. Gina had been nothing short of a blessing to him over the past 8 months. Like his own Guardian Angel. And now she was leaving him. 

2,171.8 miles away. 33 hours by car. A thirty day walk. The measurements were burned into his memory. No longer was she going to be just a walk away, no more late night walks, no more climbing out of his window and through hers whenever his parents were at it again.

“I’m going to miss you so much.” He’s smiling through his tears. One of her thumbs rises to his face to wipe away the tears that had been falling ever since he’d crawled out of his bedroom for the last time.

“You can still talk to me about everything, yeah? And we’ll talk every single day. And don’t worry, because I’m still going to tease you if you’re being a dick and-“ She sighs, deep and heavy.  
“Stay safe Ricky.”

Then, the universe finally shifts into place. She kisses him, once on the lips, locking eyes with his shocked face immediately after.

“I’ll see you around.”

And just like that, she’s gone. Running off to catch the early morning plane that would take her away from him.

-

Take me back in time to love you  
Hold me closer than before  
Heal my heart and mend what's broken  
To feel you once more

-

As the night draws to a close, and the party starts winding down, Ricky finds himself being lead to the bleachers, hand in hand with Gina.

Their spot.

He reaches up, feeling for their mark on the steel. Sure enough, it was still there, just as deep as the day they had first carved into the metal.

They just wander. Walking the length of the bleachers, like they used to. Occasionally Gina will spin around, dancing to the music that’s still audible from the hall, pulling Ricky to dance with her. No words needing to said. 

Ricky doesn’t know what to make of this unspoken atmosphere surrounding them. Even though not talking just worked for them it left a sense of uncertainty in the air. Like, even though he was here, back at the bleachers, fingers interlocking with Gina’s, he didn’t know what to make of it. Didn’t know what to think.

There were three things Ricky Bowen knew to be true. 

\- He was in love with Gina Porter.  
\- He had been in love with her, ever since her lips brushed against his cheek that night after Homecoming.  
\- If she ever walked out of his life again, he’d fall, crumble into pieces, that he wasn’t sure could be put back together again.

Even then he still felt entirely selfish, pinning his happiness on somebody else. It wasn’t fair on her. 

He watches from afar as Gina slow dances with herself to a song, blaring out across the playing field from the hall. He recognises it. 

Our Last Summer, by ABBA. Appropriate. 

Like a scene from a dodgy romcom, she was reaching out to him with both hands. “Dance with me?”

She puts her hands behind his neck, hers falling onto his waist. 

And then, it’s just them. The only ones in this reality. Dancing barefoot on the grass, under the glistening light of the stars above them. 

The only sound is that of their breathing, and the blaring music.

They were both waiting. Waiting for something to happen, something that hadn’t happened in this reality, for them to break the silence they had been too scared to shatter.

Ricky opens his mouth to speak, but only lets out a shuddered breath. And he knows Gina hears it, because she lets out one of her own. 

And then this reality shifts into another. He finds the confidence to say those words, the words that had wanted to dance along his tongue and into the air for so long. The three words that had been waiting two years for their chance to spoken on his breath. 

Three words that had ever so longed to connect the space between Gina and Ricky.

“I love you.”

-

Take me back in time to love you  
Take me back when we were lost  
Lost in love and lost in feeling  
Without the cost

-


End file.
